Breakfast with Chopin
by oceanforsail
Summary: Discontinued.
1. Prologue - 1900

It is a warm evening, with clear weather, and the theater-goers are grateful for it as they flock upon Covent Garden, anxious to see a spectacle. Many of them are members of England's elite, born to privilege and luxury. One of them is Arthur Kirkland.

He will wonder, later on, if this night was the start of it all, of the troubles to come, and will draw the conclusion that it was. It is an incorrect belief though, for in fact it all started the previous May, one rainy day in Paris.

But tonight the worries of the future are unknown, and the disasters of the present, they will be forgotten for a few hours by those attending the Royal Opera House, as they watch Puccini's new opera. Giacomo Puccini himself will be among the audience, hoping for perfection.

It is July 11, 1900, and Tosca is premiering to all England. It will be a triumph.


	2. Act 1: 1 - 1899

**Edit:** I had to change a couple minor details, so I'm reuploading this chapter. Also, there will be a delay of the new chapter, as I realized only after writing most of it out that my new chapter doesn't work and so is useless.

* * *

"Margherite?" a woman in blue called out as she spotted a figure twenty yards down the sidewalk, and stuck her arm in the air. The figure turned on hearing her name, saw her friend, and bustled over, smiling.

"Well Charlotte, I thought it was you!" She exclaimed, and pecked her on the cheeks.

"I was just on my way to your flat to drop off an invitation to lunch, as I had heard you were back in Paris," the woman in blue said, "but I thought I spied you in the street! So I called out, and yes it was! How is it, to be back in Paris after so long?"

"It's only been a year," the other woman told her, as they began walking alongside the street. "I was here last spring to buy five dresses, and now I'm here again doing the same. And at this time of year the city air is no better than in London."

"Have you seen the new Cartier shop?" Charlotte asked.

"I have not, actually," Margaret answered, "How is it?"

"Opened only last year on the Rue de la Paix, and already the most popular jewelry shop in Paris!" Charlotte exclaimed, her eyes gleaming.

"My, that is something, isn't it?" Margaret replied, eyebrows raised.

They continued walking along the street for a time in silence, until the woman in blue broke it again. "How is Arthur doing?" she asked tentatively.

"He's been in mourning, poor thing," Margaret answered, sighing.

"Well that is the proper thing, isn't it?" Charlotte asked. " We would not want him to show impropriety at something as sombre as his wife's passing."

"It was two years ago Charlotte, but the boy is still despondent over her. It's not healthy."

"I wouldn't worry too much, Marguerite, these things take time," Charlotte said.

"Margaret", Margaret corrected, stopping in her tracks, "I am English now, you remember?"

"Yes yes," Charlotte said dismissively as she stood beside her, "I am well aware. As I was saying, these things do take time. You do not expect your son to shed it after a night's rest like a dressing gown?"

"Two nights is nothing, but two years is too long. I do not like it Charlotte, not one bit."

"You worry too much dear," Charlotte told her. They began walking again. "Now, where was it you were headed?"

"I was only strolling a bit before dinner at the Ritz tonight," Margaret told her. "We have already made reservations, but perhaps you would like to join us?"

"Oh, I'm afraid I can't," Charlotte replied, "my husband and I already have reservations at Lapérouse ourselves, but I am free this Sunday?"

"So are we," Margaret replied, "Let's dine then."

° Ŏ °

"What is holding you up?" James asked, sticking his head through the doorway. He was dressed up in his evening attire, his copper hair slicked back elegantly. His brother was, however, not, suitably attired for the evening, he saw as he stepped across the threshold.

Arthur was sitting in one of the room's two armchairs, staring at the fireplace, even though there was not a fire burning. He hadn't turned the lights on either, though it was night outside. The only light in the room came from the opened doorway that James stood in. He didn't stir on his brother's intrusion.

"What the devil are you doing in the dark?" James flicked the switch on the wall, and the electric lights lit up.

"I'm not going," Arthur said simply, as he continued to look at the fireplace.

"Of course you are," James spoke, bemused. "The whole family is going, and you are a part of the family. Now put on a suit, we're going down in half an hour."

"I told you, I'm not going," Arthur replied. He still hadn't moved a hair on his head. "I am not dining in the restaurant tonight." James respected his ability to play a statue, he gave him that.

The brother in the doorway had been about to turn around and head back to his own room, but on Arthur's reply he straightened. "Art, Mother and Father have brought us here despite Father's duties to Parliament, so that you can recuperate and join the world again. You are _coming_ down to dinner."

"I did not ask mother to take me to Paris," Arthur said, irritation beginning to come into his voice. "And yes, father _should_ be in London for Parliament, so why _isn't_ he there? Does he not trust mother to be competent?"

James chuckled, and sauntered into the room. He came up behind Arthur, bent down and propped an arm over the chairback, looming over his brother's head. "Come now, don't be so scathing." He took a quick moment to take his scent in, and a smile flitted across his mouth for a moment.

"Please leave, James," Arthur snapped, frustrated in having his personal space imposed on.

James came around to stand in front of the fireplace, then squatted down on his knees so that he was at eye level to Arthur. "Now listen here Art," he told him, eyeing him seriously and putting curt emphasis on his words, "you are twenty-seven. _Far_ too old to be playing these childish games you are putting on." He paused a second to make sure Arthur was paying attention to him, then continued. "If you are not going to come to the restaurant, then talk with father about it."

Arthur glared at him; James couldn't care less. Still squatting on his haunches, he reached his hands out and rested them on his brother's knees. "Just come with down with us to the restaurant. You know the food will be delicious, if Escoffier's hands touched it."

"Who the damn is Escoffier?" Arthur snapped.

James smacked a hard hand against his brother's knee, making Arthur wince. "Don't swear," he seethed, glaring in reprimand.

He stood up then, straightening to his full height. "Put a suit on, for heaven's sake," he told Arthur, as he began walking to the door, "because you are _coming_ to dinner with us, and that is _final_."

As he stepped out of the room though, he turned his head back to his younger brother, who was rubbing his knee, and said back "Escoffier ran the Savoy Hotel until two years ago. You loved his food before you married." Then he swung the door shut with a smirk on his face.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Auguste Escoffier was the head chef of London's Savoy Hotel from 1889 to 1897, when he and Hotelier César Ritz were fired for being implicated in the disappearance of $3400 worth of alcohol. They then opened the Hotel Ritz in Paris in 1898. At both the Savoy and the Ritz the hotelier and the chef were extremely good at their jobs and, any hotel they worked at glittered and prospered.

James=Scotland. A Scottish name would never do for a member of the English Aristocracy in a human AU such as this, so I used a name of a Scottish monarch that was also suitably English (i.e. King James I).


	3. Act 1: 2 - The Rain

Arthur awoke the following morning to the sound of rain. It was light, gentle rain, the kind of rain that soothed like a burning fireplace or a lullaby in childhood. The kind of rain the rain in Spring always should be, he felt. It was early morning, judging from the soft light that flitted in between the curtains, and bathed everything it touched in a deep, rich grey. It was a very tranquil, calming color to his senses at present.

He lay in his bed for a long time, not moving, only listening to the soft pitters and patters the raindrops made as they landed against the glass panes of the windows outside.

It made him think of that one prelude by Chopin. _Good old Frederick_, he thought to himself, as one of his hands gave a twitch. He began humming the song quietly, moving his fingers about an inch above the sheets as he basked on his back in the peace of the morning, using the rain itself as a metronome.

When he later got up from under the covers and took out his watch from his coat pocket, he estimated he had laid in bed for about an hour and a half, after waking up, which was a feat he rarely accomplished.

° Ŏ °

It was ten o' clock in the morning when James came knocking at his door again. Arthur admitted him in, and gestured to one of the two armchairs in front of the fireplace. James took the seat, and Arthur stirred the coals. He had started the fire fifteen minutes earlier, and they were burning nicely.

"You're half-dressed," James remarked.

Arthur was aware, as he used the poker, of James' eyes boring into him, but he pretended they weren't. He was wearing a shirt and pants and the appropriate undergarments, but had no vest, or even suspenders. He replied only with "I know." He hadn't felt like finishing dressing that morning.

James himself was fully dressed in a grey day suit, his rustish hair slicked back. He had no cufflinks though, Arthur noted with a quick glance.

The echoes of the soft rain outside were the only sounds inside the room.

"Father is leaving tomorrow for London," James said finally, after several minutes of silence. "Mother wanted me to tell you that."

"Good," Arthur said, "he shouldn't have left London in the first place."

James gave a quick clearing of his throat. "While I am sure that the old Lords could live without one member for few weeks," he said, in a rather officious tone, "It's of course for the best that he's going back."

Arthur put the poker back in the rack, and settled into the chair opposite his brother, their feet four feet apart.

No longer being preoccupied, James became aware of how dim the room was. "Why don't you have the lights on?" he asked. He got up from his chair, but a noise of protest from Arthur brought him down again.

"Don't," Arthur told him. A glance cast sideways at him coaxed him to add "I like the dimness."

"Whatever for?" James asked of him.

"It's peaceful," Arthur said simply.

Arthur certainly did seem at peace at the moment, James thought to himself, as he studied his brother. His breathing was so quiet that he couldn't hear it, and he was sitting still again, as still as a statue. His eyes were half-focused, and James was aware that he was deep in thought. He watched his brother for maybe ten minutes, as he looked past the pretty patterns of the wallpaper behind his own head, staring ahead. Though ahead into what, James hadn't a clue.

The clapping shut of his watch cover, though, brought Arthur back to the present with a start.

"We're going out to lunch today," James said, smirking, as he stowed his watch back into his pant pocket.

"Where to?" Arthur asked, with little emotion.

The Café de la Paix," James replied.

"Is it good?" Arthur asked.

"It's on the Boulevard des Capucines, it _should_ be good," James declared, scoffing. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a cigar and a lighter.

"Don't," Arthur told him.

"Come now," James said, smiling, "I need to smoke."

"I don't like the smell," Arthur frowned. "Smoke somewhere else if you need to."

"Alright, alright," James said, relenting, and put the cigar and lighter back into his jacket with a grin. He put his hands in the air in mock surrender, on parallel level with his face.

The corner of Arthur's mouth twitched, the closest he came to cracking a smile. "What time are we going to lunch?" he asked.

"The reservations are for one o' clock," James replied, so we of course should be dressed and ready to leave at half-past twelve."

Arthur nodded. He then got up from his seat, pressing his palms onto the armrests to push himself out, and walked behind James to his steamer trunk in the corner of the room. When he returned to his chair again, he had a book in hand, and he settled in comfortably against the cushioned seatback.

"Should I leave?" James asked, with some reluctance, and eyeing the book with irritation.

"Stay if you want, I don't mind it," Arthur replied placidly.

James' fingers drum rolled on his thigh for a split second. "Alright, I'll stay here then," he said, smiling. He shifted himself in his chair a bit.

Arthur nodded to him, gave a small smile in return to please him. He opened the volume to the ribbon-marked page where he had earlier left off, and continued reading.

* * *

**Author's Note:** I'm sorry I'm a day (and a half) late with this chapter. The original chapter I wrote had some fundamental problems with it, and I realized only after writing a chunk of it that it would not do. So, I had to start from scratch and make a new chapter. I just finished writing it a few minutes ago, after starting it yesterday or Saturday (I forget which). I will endeavor though to be on time with my self-imposed deadlines of a chapter every Sunday in the future.

Also, I greatly appreciate the irony of the fact that the Café de la Paix is not on the Rue de la Paix (which translates roughly to "street of-the-Peace", or "Peace St."), but instead on the Boulevard des Capucines ("Capucines Boulevard"). It's near the Rue de la Paix though, so at least there's that.


	4. Act 1: 3 - Scuffle

_Quick Note:_ To those of you reading who will not find it obvious, this chapter picks up only one hundred and ten minutes after the last chapter left off, in Arthur's hotel room.

* * *

At noon, Margaret Kirkland knocked on her son's door, and entered. "Ah, there you boys are," she announced.

The sons in question were sitting in the two armchairs in front of the fireplace, one of them reading quietly and the other sitting stiffly.

"Is it noon then?" Arthur asked, craning his neck momentarily to give a glance at her before turning back to his book.

"Yes, and I want you both to get dressed now. We are leaving in thirty minutes," she told them in a harried tone of voice. With that she bustled out of the room again, shutting the door behind her.

Arthur flipped the page.

The elder brother watched the door for a moment, then setted back and loosened with a sigh of relief. He then began snickering quietly, amused in the way a naughty child is when he's gotten away with something he shouldn't have done.

"What are you laughing about," Arthur asked, not bothering to glance up.

James moved up his chair so that he was in right front of Arthur, and grabbed his hand.

Arthur took his left hand back, keeping his book steady on his lap with his right, palm pressed against the pages. He didn't bother looking up.

James paused a moment, then grabbed at his brother's hand again.

"No, we are not doing this," Arthur told him, taking his hand back.

No sooner had that left hand reached its owner's lap, than it was yanked forward again.

"I need this hand to turn the page," Arthur said scoldingly. "I told you that already."

They had, in fact, been playing this game for the previous thirteen minutes, when James had, out of boredom, took Arthur's hand in his own. Arthur had taken it back, James had grabbed it again, and a kind of tug-of-war broke out. Infantry charged and retreated, Arthur stabbed and thrust with a sword of wit, James fired a few artillery shots. After three and a half minutes the war was ended, an armistice was signed, and they agreed upon the conditions that James would claim governorship of the hand, until Arthur needed it to turn a page, would reclaim it, and then return it back to the temporary governor after using it.

James grabbed his hand again.

Arthur pulled it back.

James took it back, with more force than before.

Hostilities broke out between the rival powers again as the crisis escalated, commanders swore dirty curses at old enemies, and Arthur landed on top of James. James seized the opportunity and wrapped his arms around his brother.

"Let go!" Arthur exclaimed. His arms were pinned against his sides, and he couldn't get the leverage to free himself.

"Never!" James declared loudly. He was his prisoner of war, and you didn't release prisoners during wars, after all.

"Let _go_!" Arthur shouted again, more loudly this time. He pushed his hands against James' hips, but to no avail.

James only laughed in response, and squeezed tighter. Arthur started flailing, and managed to break free, but as he got to his feet James launched out of his own chair, and they hit the carpets with a loud thud. They wrestled viciously, but James came out on top, and climbed onto his prisoner in victory.

"Goddamnit James!" Arthur shrieked, as his brother held him by his wrists.

"Don't swear," James lectured.

"Let me go."

James brought his face close to his brother's, and taunted "Never." He had a smile that was partway between a grin and a smirk. He was quite proud of how strong he was.

Arthur went still for four seconds. Then he threw himself upward, and smashed his head into brother's face. James reeled back, and Arthur sprung to his feet six seconds before his brother did. As the elder turned around to face him, Arthur punched him in the face.

"OUT," he thundered, out of patience.

James stared a moment, rubbing his face, then scoffed "Oh come on, I was just having a bit of fun."

"Get. Out."

"I'd rather not," James drawled, an impish glitter in his eyes again.

Arthur's blood was cooling from the fight by now, but he was growing furious at the lack of cooperation. "I want to change," he said, "now out."

James didn't move. "I'm just your brother," he said, affecting an air of disinterest, "it shouldn't matter between family."

"You shouldn't care to watch," Arthur remarked dryly, taking the bait and jabbing his own hook into it. "As-we're-family."

James sat down in his chair.

Arthur responded to the situation by, without a word, walking over to where his book had fallen in the scuffle. He picked it up from the floor, dusted off its covers and smoothed its pages out. He then went to his wardrobe and took out a suit and walked to the bathroom and, still silent, locked himself in.

° Ŏ °

They climbed into the carriages thirty minutes later. There were two, in fact, two hansom cabs waiting outside in the rain, for a hansom cab can only seat two people comfortably; perhaps three if squeezed in. The Kirkland party, measuring four people, needed twice that.

Arthur was not normally a quick dresser, but in his agitation he had become more alert, more nimble-fingered than usual, and he managed to don the several layers of attire in a record time of ten minutes. When he had cautiously opened the bathroom door and peeked beyond it, James was no longer in his armchair, or in the room at all. Arthur assumed he must have given up waiting. The bedroom door was closed, which was odd to Arthur as his brother usually left doors slightly ajar. Not that he cared particularly for his brother at the moment.

When he had opened the door his mother was standing in the hall, patting at the curls of her hair and adjusting the hatpins in her hat as she gazed in a mirror. She paused when she heard the latch of the doorknob click, and she smiled as she turned to see her son walk out.

"Ah, Arthur," she had sighed, "You don't look so well."

Arthur hadn't realized his face was that easily read. "I'm just tired a bit mama."

She pressed the back of her hand gently to his cheek, and smiled. "You must take better care of yourself my darling, it is not healthy to go on so."

"You look nice mama," Arthur commented, taking in her violet dress.

"Thank you dear," she had said, breaking into a grin, "It's one I bought the other day while out shopping."

At that moment though, Lord Kirkland came out of his bedroom, coughing into a handkerchief, and the conversation had to be broken off as Margaret hurried after her husband. Arthur looked on at his parents as they hurried out of the parlor and felt an indescribable emotion inside of him.

Arthur had realized he had forgotten his watch then, and had to go back for it. As he passed through the door for the second time in five minutes, he wasn't sure where he had left it. It wasn't on any of the tables as he had went around the room and checked, and he couldn't find it in the steamer trunk he kept out. He eventually gave up in defeat, sure that he was running too late to dally any longer, and had quickly grabbed his overcoat and top hat from the coat stand by the doorway, before shutting the bedroom door behind him.

He had caught up with his family in the large lobby of the hotel, and together they had exited out to the Place Vendôme, braving the rain in their overcoats and hats. Arthur had meant to ride in the hansom with one of his parents, leaving James with the other, but as they stepped out onto the paving stones his brother grabbed his arm, and roughly dragged him to the first of the two carriages. He was pushed in the right side of the carriage and into the far-left seat by his brother, who told the driver to push off, and then climbed in himself into the right seat beside him.

James pulled the leather curtain shut over the front of the cab as it began to move. Arthur stared out the side window.

"Come now," James said, "lighten up. It was only a bit of fun."

Arthur had been enjoying a rare peace that morning, but any humor or positive feelings had been drained from him by the scuffle. He turned to his side, so that his brother could fully read his expression, and see in him the stony contempt he felt.

Though Arthur often swore when vexed about something, it was considered quite vulgar in the upper classes of any Western Nation in the world to curse, and Arthur himself always endeavored to do so only in privacy, of possible, and it usually was. This socially common horror of impolite language, coupled with the bitter hardness of his words and expression, caused the next two words he uttered to carry with much more gravity and force than harsher words would nowadays hold: "Damn you."

James' mouth opened and closed twice without anything coming out, and he nodded, slowly, and then turned toward the front of the cab, where the tough curtain shielded them from the rain and any view of the Rue de la Paix, and stared straight ahead. Studied the texture of the leather.

The ride lasted in silence after that.

* * *

**Author's note:** I would like to point out that, in addition to being a swear "damn you" still held widespread religious significance a hundred years ago and prior; Arthur, in his cursing, is essentially condemning James to Hell. That is a kind of gravity no swear still holds (at least in the US) these days, except with particularly religious people.

I am planning to describe the characters in more detail in the story, but I am holding off on it until it feels the right time to do so, as a good flow of the words is more important to me than physical descriptions. I try to put in details where I can though, such as the father of the Kirkland family's coughing fit.

Also, though this story is shaping up to be less Alfred x Arthur-oriented than originally planned (which I'm not particularly saddened by), rest assured, Alfred will be introduced next chapter!


	5. Act 1: 4 Commotion in the Cafe of Peace

In reality, the distance between the Ritz Hotel's front entrance and the entrance of the Café de la Paix was roughly five hundred _mètres_, so despite the traffic the carriage ride in the hansoms took five and one-half minutes.

It felt longer to Arthur though, who was sat right beside the brother he was pissed off at and was refusing to speak to. Instead he watched through the rain the buildings pass by, all of them the same shades of tans and greys. Haussmann architecture. In trying to ignore his brother, the man's presence was only amplified in Arthur's mind, and it felt to him as if a seething black cloud were on his right.

Then the carriage stopped, and there was a wrap on the little trap door in the roof of the carriage, where the driver sat above and behind them, and James pulled back the curtain over the front. He hopped out onto the sidewalk and offered his hand to Arthur to help him out, but Arthur got out of the cab on his own side into the street, and was almost run over by a horse. He flattened himself against the black side of the hansom as the large omnibus barreled past, and only let out his breath after it had gone on another ten yards away. Then realizing he was missing his hat, Arthur turned around and reached into the cab again, grabbed it, and ran around the back to the sidewalk.

James glared at Arthur for a moment, and then turned away, and trotted down the walk ten feet to where their parents were getting out of their own carriage.  
In some small recess of his head a little reasonable voice was telling Arthur that his behavior was unacceptably standoffish and underhanded, but he was too filled with vengeful indignation at the time to care.

James helped his parents into the front entrance of the restaurant, and then he came back to Arthur, who was still standing on the sidewalk in the rain and wrapped in thought, and grabbed his arm.

"You know, you're being a real piece of work," James scolded, furious with him. "You punched me, that's fine, I can take a bit of that. But being aloof and disdainful, you're no better than the worst of women! Now _behave_, and be a proper gentleman."

Arthur shook his arm loose, glaring at him in return, and strode into the restaurant.

"Oh, what miserable weather!" Lady Kirkland declared, as her husband and she handed their coats off to the valet.

"The worst," James quipped dryly, as he and Arthur did the same.

Mr. Kirkland made no comment himself, as the maître d' sat them at a table. He was preoccupied in his own thoughts. "Dear," he began after several minutes, "I think I won't join the family in the restaurant tonight after all."

"What?" Margaret asked, surprised. "Will you be ordering room service then?"

"Yes," Lord Kirkland answered, "I want to be in bed early tonight."

"Is the train leaving early in the morning then?" James asked, earning a disapproving glare from his mother as he picked a roll from the bread basket out with his hands.

"Yes, eight o' clock sharp," his father replied. "Heaven knows I'm not as young as I used to be, shame it may be."

Arthur rolled his eyes, and sipped from his wine glass.

"Don't talk like that," Lady Kirkland admonished, "You still have some years in you left."

"I'm fifty-seven, my dear," Lord Kirkland scoffed, "don't kid me."

Arthur stole a glance at his father to see his expression, but gleaned little from it.

"And Heaven knows why I'm here at all," Lord Kirkland added, "When I should be in London right now regardless!"

James nodded solemnly.

"Your health required two weeks of fresh air on the Continent," Margaret said to him officiously, here eyes darting.

"Yes yes," Lord Kirkland said dismissively, rolling his eyes. It was a lie, and he didn't believe in it any more than his wife did. It wasn't him who was supposed to be recuperating, after all.

Arthur and James both stared at their laps.

Lord Kirkland had to stop himself then, because he was about to enumerate all the important reasons he should have been in London and parliament at that moment and not dining at a café on the Boulevard de Capucines, nice though it was. He enjoyed talking politics, but politics was not a topic to be touched on in conversation in a public restaurant.

"But no matter," he said sheepishly, embarrassed at his near-faux pas. "No matter."

"Yes," Margaret agreed.

Arthur grew increasingly bored with the conversation of his family, and his attention started drifting around the restaurant. There looked to be only a few other tables' worth of people of his class, but there was a significant amount diners in simpler clothes; they were the Bohemians and thinkers who had money enough from work to enjoy fine food every so often.

"What are you going to have?" Margaret asked.

Arthur snapped back to attention. "Pardon?" he asked. A waiter was standing at his side, poised to take his order. Arthur looked quickly around the table, and found his family gazing expectantly at him. "Ah," he stammered, and turned his attention back to the waiter, "I'll have the lamb, with, ah . . . with lemon sauce," he told him in French, after a moment.

"_Bien_, Monsieur," the waiter said politely, giving a slight bow, and then he went off to give the orders to the kitchen.

"Your French is broken," Margaret commented, after the waiter had left, a trace of disappointment in her voice. "You must practice darling, it is an important language."

"Yes Mother," Arthur sighed, pretending he had any person at all to practice with. He didn't want to talk about his inadequate French, and he let his attention drift again.

"I could help him practice with his French," James suggested.

Their waiter and another came to their table then with trays laden with bowls of soup, and deftly they served them out. "_Merci_", Margaret whispered to them as they set her bowl at her place. James nodded when they set a bowl in front of him.

Arthur suddenly became aware of the light music that softly permeated the restaurant, and he twisted around in his seat, knocking the hands of the waiter by accident. The waiter regained his balance quickly and managed to keep the soup from spilling.

"That's a wonderful idea dear," Margaret replied to James' comment then, "to help with his French." She smiled. "What do you think of it, Arthur?"

Arthur turned back to her and mumbled an "of course" without any commitment. He then looked around the room again, trying to find the music. He managed to spot the band about nine yards away, and he listened hard to them, trying to figure out the tune.

"How long are we to stay in Paris?" James asked, a spoonful of his soup in hand, and blew on it.

"I will be heading back to London tomorrow," his father replied, "and your mother will take you both back in two weeks."

The verse of the song played then, and Arthur recognized it at once. "They're playing Schubert," he said, commenting his thoughts out loud.

"So we'll be home in time for the summer Season then?" James asked.

"The band is playing the Schwanengesang," Arthur said more quietly, mumbling mostly to himself.

"Yes, you will," Lord Kirkland said, traces of both irritation and satisfaction in his speaking.

"Wonderful," James said simply, "I will look forward to it."

The Swan Song ended right then, and quite abruptly. A young man in a restaurant uniform had broken off from the song, and had started playing his violin like a fiddle. He yanked from the strings an upbeat, folkish song, and he had energy, but nothing else, stammering over the beat and pulling wrong notes everywhere. Arthur stared at the man, open-mouthed, in shock at the audacity, the sheer gall of pulling a stunt like this.

One of the managers, tall and dark-haired, came out onto the floor then, and strode up with great rushing steps to the man, who stopped playing when when the manager got into his face. Patrons around the restaurant turned their heads, their attention broken from their own conversations, to see the commotion that had broken out.

The fiddler and the manager began arguing, the language growing louder and more heated by the moment, until it reached a climax in the dark-haired manager grabbing the musician by the collar, pulling him along through the café, and throwing him through the front entrance into the rain outside.

There was an awkward and uncomfortable silence throughout the restaurant for a few moments, until the manager motioned furiously with his hands for the band to start playing again. They whispered to each other what song to play, and after a few moments and some deep breaths they struck up one of Dvořák's Slavonic Dances. Gradually the atmosphere calmed, and conversations resumed again.

"I can't help but wonder at what that was about," Lady Kirkland commented after another moment. "I've never seen anything quite like that."

"I've heard only good things about this place, I'm surprised a miscreant like that even passed the job inspection," James drawled, extremely unimpressed with the commotion on the whole.

Arthur wasn't unimpressed though, he was...intrigued. That was the word he settled on after several moments' silent contemplation.

He thought about it with his a hand massaging his mouth, his spoon in the other. Then he made up his mind.

"What are you doing?" Margaret asked her son when he pushed back his chair and stood up.

"I need a bit of air," Arthur replied.

James and their father turned to look at him. "_What_?" James asked, squinting incredulously. "In the _rain_?"

"Your meal will be here in minutes dear!" Margaret said.

"And I'll be back," Arthur replied. Then he was rushing across the restaurant floor. He grabbed his top hat and coat from the valet, and shrugged into them as he went out the doors.

Stepping into the rain was not pleasant for him, especially when he realized that it was not the light drizzle when they had arrived, but was now fully pouring. Everything was a dark grey twilight despite it being 1:30 in the afternoon, and the outlines of passersby in their dark overclothes were blurred. They resembled silhouettes to Arthur, who began combing the street anxiously with his eyes. After a couple moments he spotted the fiddler thirty yards down the boulevard, and he ran up to him only to find it was an old man in a beard, someone whom the player certainly wasn't. Arthur apologized to the man, who kindly brushed it away with a smile and a nod and a mumbled "it's nothing!", and he smiled back and thanked him, and then ran off again, searching the street with his feet now as well as his eyes.

Eventually Arthur found the musician, half a block away, and only because he was still wearing the uniform of the Café de la Paix.

"Excuse me," Arthur called out, as he slowed down, and trotted up to the man. "Excuse me!"

The fiddler was standing in the middle of the square, staring ahead at the palatial opera house.

Arthur was surprised when the man turned. He had light-colored blond hair and spectacles, and judging by his face was much younger than Arthur had expected him to be. He was broad-shouldered and very tall.

"Is something wrong?" The fiddler asked. He looked extremely dejected, and Arthur instantly felt terrible for him despite himself.

Once the question was asked, all the words flew from Arthur's mouth, and for the first instance in a long time he found himself struggling for words. His mouth opened and closed a few times, trying to force something out. After a few moments, he blurted out "Are you American?"

The fiddler stared at him, and asked "_What_?"

* * *

**Author's note:**

- "Haussmann architecture" - Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann was Seine Prefect and the civil planner largely responsible for the modernization of Paris during the Second Empire. It was him, along with a contingent of cohorts, who redeveloped central Paris into what it is today, the straight, wide boulevards, the cafes, all the ten buildings and black roofs that make whole blocks look like austerely beautiful palaces. Baron Haussmann can, with a little poetic licence, be considered the father of modern Paris.

- "opera house" - the world-famous Palais Garnier.

- "schwanengesang / Swan Song" - Swan Song(s) is a cycle of thirteen (actually a cycle of twelve songs that Schubert's publishers added a separate song to, which itself was the last song he had written before dying) songs and symphonic poems composed by Franz Schubert, and the last set of songs he composed before dying. "Ständchen" ("Serenade") is number four in the cycle, and is by far the most famous of the thirteen songs, and is often known as Schubert's Swan Song, even though Swan Song is not its name, and there exists a separate song composed by Schubert earlier on with the name Swan Song. "Serenade" is known by both "Ständchen" and "Swan Song", but "Swan Song" is usually used to refer to specifically the Ständchen and not the whole cycle. "Ständchen" is probably Schubert's most famous song, being one of the few classical pieces that the unknowledgeable general public is likely to recognize on hearing.


	6. Act 1: 5 - The Fiddler

His name was Alfred. Alfred Williams. That was what Arthur had learned, after chatting with him in the foyer of the opera house. Arthur had complained about the rain, and the fiddler had suggested they take cover somewhere, not noticing the downpour himself until Arthur had mentioned it. Arthur had motioned toward the facade of the opera house, but had to coax the daunted young man with reassuring words and noises to actually get him into the palatial building.

As they walked through the long entrance hall, with its glittering chandeliers and impressive length, the fiddler had told Arthur his name, and Arthur told him his, and then they began to chat away as comfortably as only two fellows aboard ship normally did. They finally sat down on the bottom of the staircase in the grand atrium.

Alfred was from a state Arthur promptly forgot the name of, in the northeastern region of America. He was originally from England himself, he said, but his brother and he had gone to live with their maternal grandmother after their father passed away, when they were twelve.

"I'm sorry," Arthur had told him, feeling sympathy for the fellow.

Alfred shook his head quickly, motioning _'it's nothing'_, and continued talking. "Well, when hostilities broke out last year against those Spaniards, I wanted to join in, volunteer for the army. Grandmother said no though, she wouldn't let me."

Arthur nodded. He quite understood the feeling of patriotic duty to one's home country. Vicariously at least.

Alfred rocked about in his seat on the bottom steps, his neck arched back and his upturned face staring at all the sculpted stone around and above them, as if deliberating on something. After a few moments he stilled and turned to face his companion. Then he leaned inward, and whispered, conspiratorially even, "to be honest I thought it would be exciting. Quite a thrill."

Arthur did _not_ understand that. "To go to war?" he asked, incredulous.

"Yeah," Alfred had responded, grinning a little. "Bullets whizzing past your head, blood coursing through your veins, throbbing in your temples, it would be quite a thing."

He talked like a schoolboy, and Arthur was dumbfounded.

"But grandmother didn't let me go," Alfred said then, a little forlornly. "I was her _bébé_, and she couldn't bear the thought of me in harm's way. So she booked me a passage across the Atlantic, and I've been traveling around Europe since."

"That would be, what, a year you've been traveling around then?" Arthur had asked, mildly curious.

"Yes," Alfred responded.

"I see."

They had sat in awkward silence then, on the bottom steps of the grand staircase, for several minutes. Arthur was mulling over their entire interactions thus far in his head, trying to make sense of this young man that he had chased out into the rain. He had not a clue what his companion was thinking.

Alfred Williams had not been in the Palais Garnier once before that rainy day, and as he took in the grandeur of his surroundings, he was thinking about how the giant room with all its carved stone and intricate ironwork felt like a tomb to him, a very large and kingly tomb.

The grand atrium of Charles Garnier's opera house was over five stories tall and clad entirely of tan stone. Balconies jutted out from between wide columns on all four sides of the enormous space from all the upper levels, all ringed with elaborate railings of wrought iron. A giant, sweeping staircase of a stone-clad steel frame graced the innermost wall of the room, providing a visual focal point for the whole space. Large, iron-posted lamps resembling ornate versions of streetlights, or gigantic candelabras, stood here and there to light up the room, and the delicate but far-reaching murals on the expansive ceiling. The space, along with the rest of the immense building both inside and out, was ornate and extravagant to the extreme.

It held little magic for Arthur Kirkland, who had been there many times since childhood already, and so was used to the palace-like decorations. He did wonder at why they had come all the way into the atrium though, instead of taking two chairs in the giant hallway that was the grand foyer. He must not have been thinking. Arthur sat there, on the grand staircase, his sopping coat laid out on the steps to his right, and fiddled with his top hat in his hands absentmindedly.

Alfred had not taken his own waiter's jacket off, not thinking to. They sat in silence for a while, in the gloom of the cavernous room.

Eventually Arthur had voiced the thought that had been nagging at his mind for a while. "That was quite the scene in the Café today."

"Did I really cause a commotion?" Alfred asked, embarrassed.

"The whole restaurant went silent after your fight with maitre d', so yes, I'm afraid it was _very much_ a commotion."

Alfred buried his face in his hands and grimaced, and let out a groan. After a moment he had dragged his hands down his face, groaned again, and sat up straight.

"What song were you playing?" Arthur had enquired, after a second.

Alfred looked at him in surprise. "Turkey in the Straw. You don't know it?" he had asked.

"Why on _earth_ would I know an American _folk tune_?" Arthur had asked him with sardonic eyes.

"Sorry," Alfred had said, feeling foolish, "it's just such a familiar tune to myself I forget some people don't know it."

Arthur waved it off with a flick of his hand. "No matter at all," he said without emotion.

"I don't even want to pay violin though, or fiddle either," Alfred then told him. "I actually want to play ragtime."

"Ragtime?" Arthur asked, nonplussed.

"Ragged time?" Alfred tried.

Arthur gave him a glassy stare.

"It's the ragtime music they're coming out with!" Alfred cried, at a loss of how else to explain it. "Everyone loves it back home!"

"Ah," Arthur said, as it clicked into place, "That new band music from America. Yes, I do know what you're talking of. And you want to play it?"

"Very much," Alfred had said, and then added "but it's played on a pianoforte, and I don't know how to play."

"Not at all?" Arthur had asked.

"Not a note," Alfred had confided.

Arthur nodded.

"I don't know what I'll do now," Alfred had moaned then despondently. "I've lost my job, and now I'll never be able to afford my rent."

"Well, that is a dilemma isn't it?" Arthur said, commiserating, giving a scoff of the kind that said _'this is a right mess'_. He had then picked up his jacket, still damp, and felt around in his pockets, and pulled out a wad of five-franc notes. He studied the wad of money in his hand for several moments after putting down the coat, and then finally turned to his companion, and asked "Will this do?"

Alfred was dumbfounded. "Oh, I can't take your money!" he exclaimed, wide-eyed.

"I can afford it," Arthur drawled dryly, making a sarcastic inside-joke of the comment, while in his head he noted with surprise that the young man's eyes were blue. "Besides, a wealthy gentleman is supposed to be philanthropic."

"I am not a charity, I'm quite able to take care of myself," Alfred told him, irritated.

"Oh for God's sake, just take the bloody money," Arthur ordered, having lost patience. "You can pay me back on some future date if needed."

"And how would I possibly pay back when I didn't know where or who to pay to?" Alfred asked, ill-humored at his companion's brusque treatment of the situation.

Arthur paused, stumped. He thought hard, he had thought very hard on it. Then he had come up with what he thought might be the solution. "Come to England," he suggested.

"What?" Alfred asked, taken aback.

"I'll teach you to play the pianoforte, if you come and stay with my family as a guest. I know how to play myself."

"That's very generous of you, thank you, but I don't think - "

"You don't have to, of course" Arthur said, "But if you want to learn to play this 'ragged time', you'll need someone who can teach you, yes?"

Alfred was torn. One one hand, it would be accepting to accept alms from someone he hardly knew at all, as far as he was concerned. But it was a grand offer, the kind that rarely came along. What to do?...

"Where will you be staying?" Arthur had asked then. "Now that you've lost your job, and all that."

"Oh, I'll still have my room and board for a few days, at least," Alfred told him reassuringly.

"I see," Arthur replied, not missing that Alfred was trying to reassure himself as much as his companion. "Well then, why not cogitate on my offer for a while, and reply when you've decided?"

"Cogitate?" Alfred had asked, confused.

"It means 'to think over'," Arthur said listlessly. "Come to the Hotel Ritz on the Place Vendôme and ask the concierge for Mr. Kirkland."

"Tomorrow?" Alfred asked, assuming that was what was expected.

"No, that won't work, I'm seeing off a relative at the station. Come the day after instead, at two o' clock, in the best suit you have."

Alfred was not pleased at being ordered around, and he crossed his arms, squaring his shoulders. Gave his best stony stare.

Arthur realized his mistakes after a moment, and looked down in embarrassment. "Excuse my tone," he mumbled after a moment.

"Forgiven," Alfred replied, smiling now.

They then had stood up, and shook hands hands, and Arthur was taken aback for the second time of how tall the young man was.

"Well then what?" James asked.

"We walked out of the opera house without speaking. He went off somewhere, and you screamed your head off at me."

"You were gone for five hours!" James exclaimed. "The hell else would I do?! You nigh gave mother a bleeding heart attack!"

With his long coat and tall hat on Arthur had stepped out into the rain, which had not abated in the time he had spent inside the opera house, and slowly made his way back to the Café de la Paix, lost in his own thoughts until his brother had spotted him from his own place outside the restaurant's front doors, and ran up to him. He had grabbed Arthur by the shoulders and shook him violently while shouting swears and insults, furious in his terror over his younger brother's absence.

"Well I'm here now, so everyone can feel fine," Arthur said. He didn't know what else to say.

James sighed, and took a drag from his cigarette. Arthur got up from his chair on the balcony, and held his hand out. James' eyebrows raised, but he complied, and handed off a cigarette to Arthur as well. Arthur lit it on the little flame of the lighter in James's hands, and leaned his frame against the railing beside his brother.

"I thought you didn't like the smell of smoke," James commented dryly, growing a smirk on his face.

"Piss off," Arthur muttered, and blew out a puff of smoke. "Your fault for getting me hooked on these years ago anyway."

It was ten in the evening, and the rain had stopped only half an hour earlier. Even now it was still sprinkling, with raindrops so small and light they could barely be felt at all. James pulled Arthur's head toward him, and kissed the top.

"Get off!" Arthur called, irritated but a little amused.

James chuckled, and let go, and his brother drew back immediately.

Arthur was wearing a tan suit _sans_ coat, as the grey one he had worn to lunch earlier on had gotten soaked through, and had been sent to the hotel's launders fro drying and pressing. His shirt sleeves were getting wet from him resting his arms along the iron balustrade, but he didn't pay attention to it. James was wearing only a shirt and grey trousers, though Arthur didn't know if they were the same pants from the suit James wore to lunch, or a different pair.

"How do you think Mother and Father will react?" Arthur asked, tentatively, after mustering up the courage to ask it.

"To the news that you invited a young man you don't know to spend an indeterminate period of time with you at the family home so that you can teach him piano, all without asking their permission and consent first?" James sucked on his cigarette, blew a puff of smoke, and raised his eyebrows high over half-lidded eyes. "I haven't the foggiest."

The delivery of that sarcastic remark was in perfect timing, and Arthur nodded with his tongue in his cheek and in between his teeth.

"Well I hope they take it in good sport," Arthur replied, equally dry in tone.

They watched a few people walk through the square below them, from their second-storey perch. The tall window-doors open behind them.

"Father tried to talk to me about politics," James said, "When I joined him in his room for dinner. Wants me to fill a seat in the House of Commons."

Arthur's eyebrows shot up. "Oh?" was all he asked.

"I put an end to it immediately. I'm not interested."

Arthur's eyebrows lowered again. He nodded, and rolled his eyes.

Two well-dressed children, a little boy and girl, ran in through the entrance of the hotel below them and to the left, several paces ahead of their heavily cloaked parents, a bespectacled father and a bereaved mother.

"Remember when we used to trade outfits, when we were younger?" James asked, out of the blue, after a few minutes of silence.

"Vaguely," Arthur replied.

James had been small for his age at one time, when they were all children, and Arthur had been large for his at the same time. For a few years they were exactly the same size, and could swap clothes with each other whenever they wanted. They certainly were not the same size as each other now, as they stood on the narrow balcony of their second-floor hotel room.

Arthur's curiosity was roused. "Why do you ask?"

James blew a puff of smoke, as he leaned against the railing. "It's nothing."

* * *

**Author's note:**

I should have mentioned it before, but "place" (pronounced plahss) is basically the French word for "square", just like how "piazza" is the Italian word for "square".

I try my best to give good descriptions of the buildings, but I fail sometimes, so if you're having trouble visualizing the buildings, Google Image search the Hotel Ritz Paris, and the Palais Garnier, for better understanding.

I'm pretty sure there is not an American alive that does not know the famous tune of Turkey in the Straw. If you are not American and do not know it, look it up on YouTube. It's very much a hoedown piece of music, and a lot of fun to listen to.


	7. Act 1: 6 - Argument

James might not have had the foggiest that night, of how his parents would take the news that his youngest brother invited a young man none of them knew to spend an indeterminate period of time with them at their ancestral family home in order for Arthur to teach him piano, without asking for their permission or consent first, but by the next morning both sons knew exactly how their parents would take it. Margaret Kirkland had to sit down in order to compose herself, and Lord Kirkland launched into a tirade, as he paced back and forth in front of the desk. They were in the sitting parlor adjacent to the bedroom the parents were sharing.

"You _what_?!"

"I invited him," Arthur repeated calmly.

"And you don't even know him?! What the devil were you thinking?!"  
Arthur shrugged.

"You _weren't_ thinking, that's what it was!" Lord Kirkland shouted. "You don't think at all anymore! That stunt you pulled yesterday, disappearing on us like that, do you-are you even listening to me?"

Arthur sighed and told his father he was.

James stood in the doorway of the room and watched the argument unfold.

"That stunt was _beyond absurd_, and I still can't fully believe you actually did it! We waited for _fifty-three_ minutes after you left. Fifty-three! _And you still didn't show up_!"

"I waited for five hours," James countered.

Lord Kirkland rounded on his eldest. "Don't you _dare_ start with me," he shouted, "I've had just about enough of you after _your_ show_ last night_!"

"I'm thirty father, I am captain of my own ship," James said, and walked out of the room.

"You are twenty-seven, and and you act only _half that_!" Lord Kirkland shouted. Then he realized his son had actually turned his back on him, and left the room, and he let out a scream of fury as he pounded a fist onto the desk's surface.

Lady Kirkland, sitting at one of the side tables that dotted the peripheral of the parlor, buried her face in her hands.

"You are both out of control!" Lord Kirkland shouted turning his head between the door and his son in an attempt to reprimand both his sons at once. Before he could continue on further though, he was seized by one of his fits, and bent over as be began coughing.

At that Margaret Kirkland jumped from her chair, and rushed to usher him out of the room, desperately glad for a reason to leave. She rubbed his back as he coughed, making soft shushing sounds in an attempt to calm him as she helped him onto the bed.

Arthur watched his mother as she put her husband under the covers in the bedroom through the door she had left open, for a few moments, with mixed emotions. Then he left.

James was standing on the balcony of Arthur's room Arthur found when he entered. Hoping to be alone he was displeased.

"He's a riot," James scoffed, as Arthur came up.

Arthur wasn't interested in replying, and just took a cigarette and lighter from James' breast pocket.

"Manners," his brother teased, snickering.

"Piss off," Arthur told him curtly, and fumbled with the lighter in his fingers in his desperation to light his tobacco. One flick, two, three, a little flame and glowing leaves and paper. Arthur sucked hard.

"One thing the bastard has right though," James remarked, straightening up from the slouch he had worked on for years in order to perfect, "is that," he continued, coming up to stand a foot from his brother, "you have," as he put his hands on his shoulders, "indeed", picking up Arthur's chin with a hand to make him look at him, "been very reckless."

Arthur was caught between anger at his space being invaded, again, and an odd inability to care about it.

James held his gaze to Arthur's for a few moments longer, until, realizing he was not going to get a reaction like he hoped, laughed to hide his irritation. He took the cigarette from Arthur's hand and put it in his mouth, took the lighter and pocketed it in his trousers.

Arthur's gaze was still stony. He held it pointedly on his brother for just a second longer, before striding back to the door of his bedroom, and standing beside it. Held his arm out to gesture what he wanted.

"What, throwing me out?" James scoffed.

"Get the hell out of my room," Arthur told him.

James' brows drew together and he gave a scoffing sort of sigh, and blew a puff of smoke on his cigarette. He grudgingly complied afte thirteen seconds though, and sauntered out of the room.

Arthur swung the door shut behind him.

"Bloody ridiculous," James muttered to himself as he walked down the Hotel's corridor to his own room. "Everyone is bloody ridiculous today."

Arthur walked, slowly, until he was in the center of the room, and then he gazed out the large, open window-doors, a thousand yards past the balcony, and beyond even that. His calm expression belying a roiling head.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

"A thousand yards ... even that" - thousand-yard stare, i.e. staring into nothing. When a person is lost in their own thoughts and their gaze focuses on something, usually in the background, without actually seeing or taking in what they're looking at.

Short chapter, but I didn't fee like making it longer. This chapter was the longest to write by far of them all, because I was stuck on it for a while. Hopefully next one will be easier.


End file.
